Intel is pushing its Cedar Trail Atom D2550 and D2500 processors as the power behind a range of network-attached storage (NAS) systems aimed at small business and power home users.
"The amount of data being created in the home and by small businesses is bloating," said David Tuhy, GM of Intel's storage division at a Thursday …

Re: Minimum IT knowledge for El'Reg?

The important thing is that RAID isn't a substitute for backup. Problems with your RAID system or just the traditional software or finger troubles can still zap the data on a RAID system. So you still need to backup your RAID data somewhere else. For home use that may well be to an external hard disk or two rather than tape.

What the best OS for a non-expert home user? Whilst some us might explore a flavour of Linux distro, I've seen the now-discontinued Windows Home Server present itself in a clear way (though never tested in anger), as it comes with software for the client Windows machines to create incremental images and selective by-folder backups, and to monitor the server. For the person who isn't inclined to learn about backups (but their casual 'IT consultant' insists they do it), polished Windows-centric software is probably going to add at least £30 to the server's price.

In terms of catering to the non-expert user, Apple's 'Time Machine' presents a very good 'physical metaphor' for what it's up to.

My above comments are about the UI of the solution... if the novice user doesn't use them, it matters not how well they function when the shit hits the fan// reading head hits the platter.

Non-expert home users shouldn't need to worry about what OS it's running. Like mass-market Blu-ray players, media streamers and washing machines, they should simply be seen as appliances that do the job they're asked to do with the simplest interface and best reliability. The end user shouldn't need to know/care whether it's Linux, Windows or some custom beast.

In the case of a NAS, it depends on the features required, but in all cases, there needs to be a well documented backup mechanism, whether cloud based, or a USB hard disk or another PC/storage device. As someone else has put it - RAID is not backup, it's just better resilience.

Wow...

This is the most technically inept article I've seen in years (maybe a decade). Anywhere. Nothing personal, but Iain Thomson clearly needs to either find a new gig or apologize for slapping his/her name on an article his/her grandmother threw together after reading an Intel press release. I'm fairly certain you could find Amish who could do a better job. At least that would be forgivable. For shame El Reg, for shame.

Re: Wow...

Field of dreams

Build it yourself, and they will surely come... Get a case with Hotswap drives, 6TB (4x1.5TB), 16Gb RAM, i3 CPU.. for the marvellous price of £300-£350. Take your pick of OS, personally I went for ESX then slapped on a couple of VMs, but you could just as easily go for FreeNAS etc.

If you don't want to get your hands dirty, buy yourself a HP MicroServer for £150..

Re: Field of dreams

HP N40L Micrososervers

...are the dogs doodahs for a home/small office NAS - £120 after £100 cashback. There really is little point (and certainly no money to be saved) from building your own unless you're not happy with the compute power of the AMD dual-core processor which is more than capable of saturating a GigE network connection.

Upgrade the RAM to 8GB (about £30 these days), slap on FreeNAS or NAS4Free (both utilise ZFS which is a very cool file system), pop in a bunch of hard disks, boot from a 2GB memory stick and Bob is your uncle, Fanny your aunt...

Re: HP N40L Micrososervers

Sounds like crap to me

If you want a server with really lousy performance, go ahead, buy one, you'll never notice, cause, hey, you're just a home user and we all know home users don't need real performance .. at least for 5 years, or so, kinda, maybe, we're pretty sure, I think.

The Hp N40L is pretty good and the CriKit MicroServer smokes if you need a compact Xeon machine with more memory http://www.crikit.info. Acer had one too, but not sure where it went. Expect a lot more MicroServers to hit the market in the next 6 months.

Agreed - the only reason the Atom seems OK is that it's a very weak processor, and even Intel can build one that doesn't need 100w to achieve that. An i3 might peak in power, but would've done the work in a fraction the time, taming the power bill and feeding your data much more snappily..